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Post
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Do you want to be on the net ? To join Poetry Corner, Just SMS : 91-9969154602, Email : akn929@yahoo.com This is an unique platform for established and upcoming Poets to exhibit their poetry and creative writings. It also provides a window through which people and poetry lovers in India and abroad get an opportunity to read creative writing of new and old talents. Register yourself and send your profile and poems to Leenacom.com, Garodia nagar, 25/179, Ghatkopar, Bombay 400 077. India. |
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"Heaven above was blue, and the earth beneath was green; the river glistened like a path of diamonds in the sun; the birds poured forth their songs from the shady trees; the lark soared high above the waving corn; and the deep buzz of insects filled the air." .....Charles Dickens
News
Britain named its first female - and openly gay-poet laureate to follow in the footsteps of William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Carol Ann Duffy whose works are both popular and critically acclaimed, will produce poems for state occasions after being confirmed to prestigious, 341-year-old post
Providing with a platform is Cha Writers, a collaboration between Oxford Bookstore and The Open Theatre, brainchild of Zubin Driver, creative head at CNBC. Writers interested in presenting their works can email at :- theopentheatresubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Leading British playwright Harold Pinter, who won the literature Nobel in 2005, died on 24th Dec'08. He was 78 and was battling cancer. The author, director, actor, poet and political activist was known for his left-wing political views and was a vociferous critic of British and US foreign policy. ........................................................................................................... |
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" At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet " ........Plato |
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| Indian Poetry | ||
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God!
Uninvited, I went to a temple And God wasn't there. They say, He's gone fishing, or relaxing in a five star or strolling on the beach For he too must rest.
But the priest Am told, is acting God. Thank God, God is a stone I wonder, What they would do If he was real . I'll keep coming back Amidst the majestic mountains, the exuberant valley . The virgin banks dressed in white snow and peace all around but for the Chinar whispering , quietly disturbed by the flow of the clear stream the cool breeze across and the occasional music of the birds, I belong here. I love to live here with the gods.
I'll keep coming back to this land of the gods. I belong here in the Himalayas. { Taken from ' Time to be alone ', a collection of poems by Anil Kumar Naik. }
To lead a noble life Rainbow In the rainy sky -----Monima Choudhury (Nalbari, Assam)
Your loving call from
a far Tragedy of a friend I once visited my friend And was shocked to see her groan She was in pain, she grew thin In agony I gave a cry of shock On seeing me she was now wailing I held her up and wiped the tears rolling I caught her hand and leaning forward asked her the cause of her wound. The ruins of life started with a death A natural cause, due to hunger and famine On seeing her father dead, her mother threw herself to death too. Now she was alone and waiting for her turn I calmed her and took her hand which fell lifeless on the ground. ---Rimshy Chandra (Sharjah, UAE) A Glimpse I forgot about eternity the other day Only a though about to be sucked Into the black hole of my mind Signalled persistently for rescue. I saw the ring of pure untarnished Gold on my finger and slipped it off. As I enclosed it in my palm I saw the ring expanding endlessly; Its golden effulgence enveloping the vast expanse of the universe. When I opened my palm again The ring lay there, innocently inactive. ---Rita Nath Keshari (Pondicherry) Thoughts Yes those were My anxious moments; Then hyperbolic thoughts Took me beyond yonder worlds. Then I saw a lamb; A cat mewed, A rat fled, A snake hissed, There I saw a Miss And she kissed me She is my Lakshmi My beloved Lordess Lakshmi my Goddess Whoever be with me; I am a banker A rich aristocrat Loafing on the streets And every nook and corner of Mangalore; Here I stay everyday and days And years I wish I live in this galaxy. Dr. V.S. Skanda Prasad (Mangalore) .......................................................................................................................................................... |
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(Do you want to be here. Send your profile, not exceeding 150 words alongwith your cheque/draft/MO in favour of Naik, payable at Bombay (Registration charges -Rs200/1 year or Rs.500/5 years), send it to Leenacom.com, Garodia nagar, 25/179, Bombay 400077. India. All profiles/poems are posted in good faith, we will not be held liable in any dispute arising thereof) ............................................................................................................................................................. |
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| " Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.".............George Bernard Shaw | ||
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Overseas Poetry |
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Harmonium Something Where the suns are held locked The clouds come out Psychedelic direction Sudden song Listening to silence A harmonium plays The inaccessible notes of times. The secluded small Hyacinthe Lost in her dreams The night the mourning veils fell Of the black depths. Joyful word of erotic awards. Thread's end, Tender Hindus Open the subterranean chambers of gods. ----Marina Zagrafou (Athenes, Greece)
Midcontinent Something holds us here - Something holds us here, -----Mark
Vintz, USA A comet Though the comet has a tail with light refreshing, Its life in the skies is short and transitory. I dream a dream of getting fugacious glory, So I breathe to the comet prayers far-reaching. -----Prof. Dr. Kazuyosi Ikeda ( Japan ) Cry Though the Don't call quickly As if you still care For the new season Knows your scent And has traced Your ashen backbone As would a hunter --- Hungrily calculating. This recessed memory, Your image drifts Into paper sacrifice -- I call not into heart Nor heaven but wait Without kind patience -- My shadow seeking cover Again from this wicked taunting sun which blazed But set too long ago. ----Diana Kwiatkowski Rubin (Piscataway, USA)
Haikus Striving to construe the hidden language of flowers I have lost my way. You alone at home and I far accross the seas: the iris has wilted. I have trod the path bestrewn with burning gravel see my blood-stained feet. The flight of the owl leaves the hoar-flowers shattered: my bath is frozen. ----Georges Friedenkraft (France) Cameroon Drum Heartbeat of the earth, Rhythm of sun, moon, stars, Man's breathing out, breathing in, Held captive by the drum. Town crier of the village, Clock on the courthouse wall, Telephone between continents, Essence of rhythm, Africa's energy, Africa's stirring, Africa's sound. ----Norma Woodbridge (Florida, USA)
In Days to come When once I will have lived clouds will roll over the village as they have for all ages but the sun will have burnt everything. The cities will have all come unhinged just like the residents within, for never could a dry leaf possibly withstand a storm. When once I will have lived the world will not have really changed; all will turn round unalterably and will be as in the past, Well, nearly everything... ------Kurt F. Svatek (Austria) .......................................................................................................................................................... |
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A Tribute to Lord Alfred Tennyson on his Birth Bi-centenary
-- by Aju Mukhopadhyay I do not want to touch, not much of his vast
body of works, but just to pay my regards for the principal representative
of the Victorian poets. ‘He is unquestionably the representative English
poet of his time. He mirrors its ordinary cultivated mind as it shaped in
the English temperament and intelligence, with an extraordinary fidelity
and in a richly furnished and heavily decorated mirror set round with all
the art and device that could be appreciated by the contemporary taste.
There has been no more consummate master of the language, and this mastery
is used with a careful, sure and unfailing hand.’ Wrote Sri Aurobindo in
his Future Poetry, as it is in volume nine of the Sri Aurobindo Birth
Centenary Library; Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry; 1972.
‘With the death of Keats in 1821 and of Shelley in 1822 the main
movement of English Romanticism came to an end . . . . Though Tennyson
learned much from the Romantics, he was not of their number . . . .
Tennyson and Byron became the protagonists of English poetry, and the
Romantic generation passed into history.’ Wrote Sir Maurice Bowra in his
The Romantic Imagination; OUP, London, 1964.
‘The epoch associated in England with the name of Victoria was in
poetry . . . . it leaves an impression of a too cramped
fullness and a too level curiosity. It is a descent into a comfortable and
pretty hollow or a well- cultured flatness between high, wild and
beautiful mountain ranges behind and in front a great confused beginning
of cliff and seashore, sands and rocks and breakers and magic of hills and
sea-horizons. There is much in this work to admire, something here and
there to stimulate, but only a little that lifts off the feet and carries
to the summits of the poetic enthusiasm.’
With this Sri Aurobindo further elaborated the spirit of the age in
his Future Poetry- ‘In England there was the added misfortune of a reign
of rampant philistinism. The Victorian period for all its activity and
fruitfulness was by no means one of those great intellectual humanistic
ages, which the world will look back to with a satisfied sense of clarity
or of uplifting. The great flood of free thinking, free enquiry,
scientific and artistic vivacity, the rapid breaking of fresh ground, the
noble political enthusiasms which stirred France and Germany and Italy and
created a new force of democratic humanism in Russia, swept in vain past
the English shores. . . . Unteachable, it bore with a scornful complacency
or bewildered anger or a listening ear of impervious indulgence the
lightning shafts of Arnold’s irony, the turbid fulminations of Carlyle,
the fiery raids of Ruskin or saw unaffected others of its fine or great
spirits turn for refuge to mediaevalism or socialistic utopias.’
He said that the work of revolt and preparation was done in prose
mainly for ‘Poetry flourishes best when it is the rhythmical expression
of the soul of its age, of what is greatest and deepest in it, but still
belongs to it, and the poetry of this period suffers by the dull
smoke-laden atmosphere in which it flowered. . . . There is certainly much
imaginative beauty, much artistic or fine or strong technical execution, -
a great deal more in fact of this element than at any pervious time, -
much excellent work high enough in the second rank, but the inner surge
and satisfaction of a free or deep spirit, the strong high-riding pinion
or the skyward look, these things are rare in Victorian poetry.’
Among the poets of the period Tennyson occupies the highest place.
Sri Aurobindo compared him in the book cited, to a jeweller, an
accomplished craftsman and artist in that sense. ‘This art is that of a
master craftsman, a goldsmith, silversmith, jeweller of speech and
substance with much of the decorative painter in his turn, who never
travels beyond general, well-understood and popular ideas and forms, but
gives them by his fineness of manner and felicity of image a charm and
distinction which belong more properly to rarer and greater or lovelier
motives. The achievement is of a kind which would hardly be worth doing
more than once, but done that once and with such mastery it takes its
place and compels admiration. The spirit is not filled, but the outer
aesthetic mind is caught and for a time held captive . . . .
‘Tennyson wrote much narrative poetry, but he is not a great
narrative poet. There is a curious blending of incompatible intentions in
all his work of this kind and even his exceptional skill could not save
him from a brilliant failure.’
Regarding Tennyson’s use of myth and legend to recreate them to
be symbols for a noble kind of poetry of high spiritual and ethical
purport, Sri Aurobindo wrote, ‘There is no congruity between the form
and symbol and the feeling and substance. They seem solely to be used to
frame a conventional sentimentalism of Victorian domesticity and
respectable social ethics. . . . There is a void of the true sincerity of
poetic vision at the heart of the original conception and no amount of
craft and skill in language or descriptive detail and picture can cure
that original deficiency.’
Sri Aurobindo described most of Tennyson’s creations as ‘Richly
coloured triviality’ and this he extends to the poet’s capacity to
write lyrics- ‘Tennyson does not figure largely as a lyrical poet in
spite of one or two inspired and happy moments; for he has neither the
lyrical passion and intoxication nor the profounder depth of lyrical
feeling.’ His Nature poems seemed to him to be mere ornamentation and
decoration without the truth of vision.
As a thinker too Tennyson fails to keep his foot print, Sri
Aurobindo observed, ‘He gives us a good deal of thinking of a kind in
often admirably telling phrase and with much art of setting, but he is not
a revealing poetical thinker. His thought seldom escapes from the
conventional limits of a cultivated, but not a large or original Victorian
mind. . . .
‘A great poetical craftsman turning many forms to account for the
displaying of an unusual power of descriptive and decorative language and
a verse of most skilled device, but no very great purpose and substance,
this he is from the beginning to end of his creation. His art suffers from
the excess of value of form over value of content; it incurs a liability
to a besetting note of artificiality, a frequent falsetto tone of
prettiness, an excessive stress, a colouring which is often too bright for
the stuff it hues and is unevenly laid, but it is always taking and
effective. By this very limitation of mind he becomes the representative
poet of a certain side of the English mentality. . . . He has left his
stamp on the language and has given starting-points and forms for poets of
a rarer force to turn to greater uses and pass beyond them to a new
construction.’
In spite of various limitations as the critics found, Lord Tennyson
was the founder of certain norms of a particular age. Though he had many
failings he uttered certain words which carried his conviction and were
later imbibed by others, knowingly or unknowingly. The following few
paragraphs from In Memoriam may
be cited as proof of his growing idea about the soul and its rebirth,
about the double aspect of the self and about human faith- The baby new to earth and sky, What time his tender palm is prest Against the circle of the breast, Has never thought that ‘this is I:’ But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of ‘I,’ and ‘me,’ And finds ‘I am not what I see, And other than the things I touch. . . . . This use may lie in blood and breath, Which else were fruitless of their due, Had man to learn himself anew Beyond the second birth of Death. (Section 45) There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds. (Section 96)
These ideas seem to be Indian. We grow with them and many of us
love such ideas as they are kindred to our heart. And here we get a delightful poem with the
metaphoric use of an image of cloud on earth. A shade falls on us like the dark From little cloudlets on the grass, But sweeps away as out we pass To range the woods, to roam the park.
(The last section-131)
We honour the poet who laboured hard to create a poetic genre to
establish himself as the representative of a poetic epoch. He might have
done more but was perhaps limited by his own commitment to his time. (Aju
Mukhopadhyay can be contacted on Email- aju_mukhopadhyay@yahoo.com
) |
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| Profile | ||
Norma Woodbridge Norma Woodbridge is an American poet, writing in English. She is in the Who's Who in America; and has seven published books of poetry. She is a Yaddo Fellow, and was privileged recently to ready her poetry on Africa over National Public Radio. She is registered Nurse, working fulltime, and has an agent representing a play and a novel of her's presently. She also has a jazz album , 'Watercolour Dreams'. She resides in North Fort Myers, Florida, USA. ......................................................................................................................... Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). British novelist, also distinguished feminist essayist, critic, and a central figure of the Bloomsbury group. Woolf was born on January 25, 1882 in London, as the daughter of Julia Jackson Duckworth, a member of the Duckworth publishing family, and Leslie Stephen, a literary critic and the founder of the Dictionary of National Biography. Woolf's concern with feminist thematics are dominant in 'A Room Of One's Own' (1929), which deals with the obstacies and prejudices that have hindered women writers, and explores in the last chapter the possibility of an androgynous mind. 'Three Guineas'(1938) exmined the necessity for women to make a claim for their own history and literature. 'Orlando' (1928), a fantasy novel, traced the career of the androgynous protagonist from a masculine identity within the Elizabethan court to a feminine identity in 1928. Woolf was also prolific as an essayist, publishing some 500 essays in periodicals and collections, beginning 1905. .......................................................................................................................................................... |
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| Books | ||
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The latest five popular books on Poetry :
edited by Grace Schulman (Viking, $40). This splendid, much needed new edition contains more than100 previously uncollected and unpublished versions by one of the most witty, alert, scapular and truthful American modernists.
edited by Ilan Stavans (Farrar Straus Giroux, $40) This is the most comprehensive single volume in English of a marvellous, inexhaustible and humane Latin-American poet, one of the 20th century's radiant lights.
edited by Frank Bidart & David Gewanter (Farrar Straus Giroux,$45). This is wonderfully definitive, long awaited new edition gives us the full scope of a courageous, tormented, shocking and brilliant American poet.
by Charles Sjmic (Harcourt,$25), Selections from eight previous books come together with 19 new poems in this sardonic, poignant and endlessly surprising collection by an American poet with a keen Eastern European sensibility.
by John Kinsella (Norton, $23,95). The long-overdue American debut by one of Australia's most vivid, energetic and stormy poets, a writer who turns to the natural world with a fierce light.
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Numerology - What the numbers say? Click on 'Matrimony' |
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Poetry Corner invites Poets / writers to send their latest publication and books to let the world know about you and your writing. |
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| Humour | ||
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On the busy road, an angry man was desperately chasing another man. When questioned about the chase, he retorted, ' I am a poet. I heard his poetry and he refuses to hear my poetry ! '
In Hindi it is said, ' Jaha nahi jataa hai ravi, waha jataa hai kavi' (Wherever the sunlight doesn't
reach, the poet manages to reach) Teacher to student : 'Milton, William Wordsworth.....were famous poets. Can you name today's famous poet'. Student : ' Michael Jackson !' ..........................................................................................................................................................
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(Do you want to be here. Send your profile, not exceeding 150 words alongwith your cheque/draft/MO in favour of Naik, payable at Bombay (Registaration charges -Rs200/1 year or Rs.500/5 years), send it to Leenacom.com, Garodia nagar, 25/179, Bombay 400077. India. All profiles/poems are posted in good faith, we will not be held liable in any dispute arising thereof) |
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Indian Poetry 
